


The Story of Anon Praise

by Blueseelie



Series: Liera's Children [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Backstory, Blood and Gore, Child Abuse, Gen, Murder, Starvation, Violence, bbeg - Freeform, dnd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:08:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28195209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueseelie/pseuds/Blueseelie
Summary: Fueled by his trauma and devotion to Liera, the Goddess of Lies, Anon Praise is a faithful servant who uses smiles and trickery to get close to the people who remind him of his past in order to kill them savagely in his goddess's name. 12 year-old tiefling cleric turned serial killer, Anon began the campaign as my PC but slowly lost his sanity until the DM took him over and turned him into the final BBEG to end the campaign.
Series: Liera's Children [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065512





	The Story of Anon Praise

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for child abuse, starvation, and gory violence.

The sun still glared too brightly. The young boy looked back down at the ground, observing the patterns of footprints that made up the well-worn path through the fields. He stole another gaze upwards to see the level plane of grassy plants he couldn’t name, met by the horizon and the gate that marked its edges. He walked slowly, savoring the warmth of the sun even though it made him squint and his lips dry. He could feel the muddy dirt collecting on the underside of his cloven feet but he relished the sensation. A few more steps would bring him out of the cover of the grass, but it’s not like he could hide there forever. His long white horns poking out above him would give him away soon enough.

Anon stepped out into the main courtyard. He skirted around the edge of the space, avoiding the pack of children playing games around the statues that littered the square, statues of dead priests and other recognized leaders of their sect. They failed to notice him, allowing Anon to reach the kitchens unbothered. He slipped through the swinging doors of the main kitchens and silently placed the basket he had been carrying down on one of the many cluttered counters. Despite his best efforts, the Mother noticed him.

“Anon!” She said sweetly turning on him while reaching for his arm to grab it with her unlikely strength.

“You’re back! How was your trip to the storehouse? Sorry, we had to send you out there, but the boy we had posted fell sick the other day and we didn’t have any others to spare. Liera spare me…” Mother Marta’s words were for Anon but her focus was on the goods of the basket. She was counting each bundle of greens and packet of dried fruit Anon had brought with him to make sure everything was accounted for. 

“My good boy, you haven’t taken anything for yourself have you?” She said with a voice sweeter than the jars of honey Anon had just carried over. 

“Of course not Mother Marta” Anon flashed a glance upward before looking down at his dirty hooves.

The mother smiled and cupped his cheek with her hand. 

“Good. Now hurry over to Mother Gen and Mother Torn. You’re absolutely filthy” she said before turning her back to him. 

Anon hurried through the door out of the kitchen and into the main hall, then through another door to one of the ceremonial rooms. Mother Gen and Mother Torn had already brought in buckets of well water and were sitting reading scripture with Father Caleb. They all looked up when he entered and without saying a word the two mothers got up and began methodically laying out clothes and bottles of oil for his cleansing. The Father stayed seated and returned to his book. The two mothers finished and now stood waiting expectantly for Anon. Without being told to do so, Anon removed his robe and undergarments to stand naked in the chilly room. The Mothers let him stand there for a second to access the damage. It had rained recently and Anon’s hooves and legs were caked with mud. His hands too were grimy from digging out the mud that had covered the storehouse door. The rest of his boney emaciated body was a milky white, with just the tinge of green that had always made him look more sickly than he was.

Mother Gen pulled him to the center of the room while Mother Torn wrang out a wet cloth. They got to work wordlessly, viciously scrubbing every inch of him, even the parts that had remained clean. They rounded him, buffing out even the smallest specks of dirt. Mother Gen whacked the back of his knee forcing his leg to bend and allowing her to scrape roughly to remove the caked-on dirt. The whole ordeal took about 40 minutes. 

When they were done with the washing and anointing of scented oils, the Mothers stood back for Father Caleb to inspect their work. They had left Anon still damp and naked, shivering in the middle of the room for the Father to circle him, eyeing any place dirt might find itself. When he was satisfied, he turned his back to Anon to face the Mothers.

“He looks proper. Get dressed child.”

Anon hurried to the pile of simple robes folded on a chair, covering the boniness of his body. 

“Back to the temple, evening worship starts in a little while,” said the Father addressing him, and with that, the mothers and father left him alone in the washroom.

Anon waited for them to leave before following out of the same door, walking back through the main hall. He could hear the loud voices of children from the kitchen happily receiving dinner after a long day. They had been spread out among the nearby towns, carrying out a different sort of work than they had sent Anon to do.

Liera, Goddess of lies and deceit, the Father said, valued those who expanded her domain to the people around them. In order to do that he said, one had to naturally lie and deceive. Every day, the Father sent out the children to wreak havoc on the surrounding towns. They weren't burning down barns or killing goats, only causing chaos in small ways. Giving false directions to travelers, teasing open the cages of a chicken or two at the market, trying out false names and identities with the townspeople in order to pick their pockets or steal fruit from their stalls. At the end of the day, they presented their deeds to Mother Marta, who would then make them a dish of whatever delicious thing she had made that day. Anything stolen wound up at Liera’s alter that evening when the entire community came to pray together. Except for Anon. He was always praying.

Anon hurried through the gathering darkness of the courtyard and slipped around the side of the chapel. It wasn’t particularly grand on the outside, but as the Father said, appearances can be deceiving. The small side door was just large enough for someone as skinny as Anon to comfortably squeeze through. He wormed his way through the old wooden tunnel, making his way under the main altar until he could see the outline of light coming from his little hatch. He unlatched it, letting the door swing down to close off the passageway and scrambled up into the prayer box.

From the perspective of the pews, the prayer box was only a small portion of the gigantic altar to the goddess. Anon’s place at the alter was caged in by a beautiful wooden railing and haloed by intricate carvings and lesser idols. It sat to the bottom left of the 10-foot idol of Liera, whose wooden hair fell down to her feet and curled around Anon’s box and stand for the Father to speak on the right side. While the Father gave sermons at Liera’s right as Her chosen Voice, Anon sat and prayed day in and day out at her left as Her chosen Mask. The Father said he represented one of their Goddess of deceit’s many forms, with his straight upright horns and long wispy tail mimicking her most popular form. That’s why he was chosen, said the father. That’s why they filed his teeth to points when they first took him from the streets and starved him every week in the chapel, to show Liera that he was hers, Her chosen Mask.

Anon settled onto the smooth wooden floor of the box, which was completely bare from the inside, and looked up at the towering idol of his Goddess Liera. He wasn’t supposed to speak to her as he was only one of Her many Masks but he began to pray; to serve her, to be her hand, her tool, her servant, her son. He repeated his roles in his mind, staring upwards in the dim candlelight until his neck began to ache and his knees felt stiff from kneeling. He didn’t know when the evening service started and the Father and the children came to pray alongside him so he didn’t dare move from his position. He imagined the fields he’d walked through that morning and the perfect balance of the earth and the vast sky. Even with that beautiful image in his mind, he couldn’t help but think of Liera, how that beauty was a lie, just as all things were in her world. The plants would die in the winter, the sky would darken that night, and one-day mountains would rise up and destroy that balance. Everything was a lie, even the pain in his back or the hunger in his stomach. Even his body was just a mask, an empty husk for his soul.

Despite the punishments, he would receive from the Father and the Mothers for making a noise in the chapel, gazed at the wooden mask of Liera’s idol and whispered, “Praise be the Goddess Liera.”

Then something snapped. The ache that ran throughout every muscle of his body vanished and the pain in his stomach was gone. He hadn’t moved but the feeling in his hands and arms were gone. He could still twitch them, but he felt nothing, no pain. 

Then he could hear her. Unexplainable and silent but there. Telling him he was the only one, her only true follower, her only true son, the only one with true faith, the only one to be her true voice.

Then he was rising, vaulting silently over the railing to walk through the empty pews and heave open the doors. He stood there, staring at the children playing in the courtyard. The mother had fed them and they were outside while the Father and Mothers ate in the hall. One of the kids spotted him and stopped. They made eye contact. And slowly Anon smiled, his set of sharpened teeth bright white and blank white eyes eating into the child across the yard.

Then he lunged, making his way through the crowd of the same people who’d watched him suffering every morning and every night, starving and silent while the Father preached heresy about the Goddess. He sunk his teeth into their necks and tore their delicate skin as the voice marked each of them as heretics, false followers, and disloyal. Their execution only took ten minutes. 

You are my voice, the voice repeated guiding Anon to the great hall. His robes were soaked red but no one noticed him enter, slinking past the tables of the field workers and the lower priests, making his way to the head table of the Father and the Mothers, silenced and shadowed by a supernatural force.  
You are my voice. His goddess grew louder. The Father sat with three of the Mothers on each side, gorging himself, stuffing his face, getting fat on the Goddess’s blessings. Anon stood behind him, still unnoticed. You are my voice, you are my voice, you are my son, Anon. He pulled a kitchen knife out from his robes and passed it by the father's fat neck to sit on his throat.

“Praise be Liera” he rasped, as the Father finally noticed Anon’s breath on his back. The knife went through his flesh without resistance and he sat still for a second before falling onto his plate, blood dripping off the table onto the robes of the Mothers next to him. One of them screamed. And Anon began, making quick work of everyone sitting at the head table. By the time they were all down, the rest of them down below had realized what had happened and were standing up. Anon launched himself over the table and carried out Liera’s wishes.


End file.
